Discussion (52) ¬

Having been on that side of the cashier, I can relate. “You want a burrito with no beans, no rice, no meat… That’s cheese on a tortilla.” Luckily, we had a “special” button where you could type out the specific instructions, but that was pointless. Every time I would do that, the kitchen would shout at me “You punched this in wrong” and I’d shout back, “No, we just have weird customers”.

Customer: “So, this is an on-line order item.”
Me: “Yes.”
Customer: “So, it’s only available online?”
Me: “Yes.”
Customer: *Thinks very carefully for several seconds*”Well…would you have any out back?”
Me: “….I’ll go check.”

Jesus, that reminds me of the times I would go to hang out with my friend at his job, a fat person would come in, and we’d guess at how big an order she’d make before asking for a diet coke. Cause we knew they would.

Yeah, like that diet coke is going to balance out a McRib, two double cheeseburgers with extra bacon, an extra large fry, 12 piece chicken nuggets, and a McFlurry. And that was one of the lighter orders!

On behalf of those of us who do, occasionally, fit this comment … I ALWAYS order diet sodas – I just prefer the taste over regular sodas. This does come in handy though when I am trying to lose weight (usually through cutting way back on refined carbs).

My apologies if I offended those who were. I made this comment thinking about those who confessed, when asked, that they believed that getting a diet soda counter-balanced all that food they got themselves. Again, my apologies to those who do not fit what I said before, and where still offended.

Sadly, one of my close friends growing up is like that D: I went to her house when I visited and she had gained a HORRIBLE amount of weight! She made some sort of a potato salad sandwich that looked like it dripped with calories, then her husband brought home fast food and it was a huge amount with fries and everything, and then he was like “Honey, I know you want my coke, but you have to drink the diet. remember you’re trying to lose weight!”
It was super extra large diet coke.
I was BOGGLED!
(in her defense, she’s now trying to lose weight in hopefully a better way now :/)

Heh, I can just see the complications of a lifetime of this stuff… Hopefully they will find places they can frequent so after a while the staff will just go, “Oh, it’s the guy with the weird kid again” and it will all be routine. Though you get points for setting up a situation where ordering a chili dog becomes fraught with drama. That’s one of the things I love about this comic – how suspense becomes built up out of such small things.

On a related note, this reminds me of the time my father went to Taco Bell and attempted to order “half a busted taco shell”, because we owned a hamster and she loved corn chips, so he wanted to get her a taco shell to much. The cashier went into a huddle with the other workers and eventually rang it up as a taco minus everything. We probably could have gotten a bag of corn chips for what that one taco shell cost, but it was worth it to watch the drama unfold.

I do hope he told them she was ‘different’ so they aren’t beyond shocked when they see her. Even a slight mention that she had ‘skin problems’ or the like just as long as they are ready of even a small difference to lighten the blow.

I love it. We always have issues like this when we go out to eat because my younger brother is very picky. So’s my mom sometimes. I also love that she’s a carnivore and he’s basically an herbivore. It’s almost as if this situation was destined to be funny.

I wen veg for a couple years, and when I was finally coaxed back into eating meat it made me awfully sick. Like, I would puke and stuff whenever I ate meat. Freaaky stuffs. I wonder if Todd will have any similar reactions??
Anyhow, I had this sorta similar kinda thing with an alien lifeform in a book I;m writing. They really, really, REALLY can’t eat ANY Earth food. Not anything that grows on Earth and most things that Humans can eat. At the least, it can pass through their system without giving them any nutrients. At worst, it can kill them.
The actuall QUESTION is, or should have been asked a couple of pages ago– but, I was wondering what the least-case and worst-case scenerios were in Selkie’s eating habits, if you pleeeaase? 😀
P.S, That Orphanage Kids pic. I promised? Still underway! Just got new computer, and systems been down for AGES but Photoshop is up again and It should be done before December, yo.
‘Fo true. ((FANTA OUT))

A least-case scenario in regards to Selkie eating plant matter is indigestion. She can handle a little of it, but too much and it starts upsetting her stomach and she can get cramps. Worst case is vomiting/diarrhea.

Probably. The human body is actually host to a large number of bacteria that we depend on to digest food. The bacteria get to it first and break things down, and our digestive tract deals with the remains of that process. This is why people who have been vegan for years have severe problems digesting meat, and why others become lactose intolerant. The bacteria responsible for helping us with those materials haven’t had anything to survive on all that time and die off, leaving us unable to digest it.

An alien ecosystem would not have any logical reason to mimic Earth’s ecosystem to the extent of us just walking up and picking fruit off the trees to eat. The materials used to make their foods would likely be different elements mixed in different patterns, and our digestive organs and resident bacteria would have no clue how to handle it. It’d end up coming out the other end the same way it went in.

But then, sci fi would grind to a halt if food issues were represented more accurately… : /

Well, I’m commenting way late on this, but I can’t resist sticking my nose in. 🙂

On the subject of aliens and food, there is actually a very simple and logical explanation for why creatures from another planet might find out cuisine indigestible. Chirality. It’s been a long time since I took Organic Chemistry, but it works like this: When you have a long complex molecule, it’s possible to have more than one shape despite having the same chemical makeup. It’s the same chemical, but you can have two mirror image forms of it. The simplest way to refer to them is as left handed or right handed.

Now then, for whatever reason, all life on Earth uses left handed proteins and amino acids. (There’s a few theories as to why that is: It could just be random chance, but there’s some evidence that polarized light from a nearby star may have preferentially destroyed right handed proteins when life was first forming.) Whatever the reason, that’s how life here has evolved. So we’re all on the same page. Everything we eat and everything that eats us runs on left handed proteins.

Now, throw in a creature from Alpha Centuri… And even if it’s carbon based like us, even if it uses the same types of DNA as us, even if it uses the same proteins as us… Heck, even if it’s practically a clone of a human… If its protein structure is right handed… Things on earth won’t smell right. Won’t taste right. And won’t digest right. At all. (All those features rely to some extent on the SHAPE of the molecule, and mirror image chemicals won’t fit into the appropriate ‘slots’ properly.)

So unless said alien lives off energy and raw materials… Soaking up heat and sunlight perhaps, fixing it’s own nitrogen from the atmosphere, making it’s own protein chains internally from ingested carbon and inhaled hydrogen… It’s going to have a rather short, hungry, and unpleasant stay on earth. ;>

Yes, it’s pretty much the same– some foods, the more natural ones, are most likely to pass through both sides (human and nonhuman) while giving little to no nutrients. But, like with the nonhumans, if humans were to eat foods from their homeplanet or foods produced by them, they would get sick, and could possibly die.

I’m, ah, not the most scientific person, so it’s not really and exact science, but I did a humungous amount of research prior to writing the story, so, it’s at least a bit accurate! Also, very iinteresting with Selkie! I’m glad that most of what you say about her race is dumbed down enough for me to understand, and I’m actualy really interested in Selkie and her race. 😀 Keep up da good work!

I love the details you put into this comic, like him asking about the cheese sauce. Even though I know in the back of my head that there’s not really much cheese involved in its making, I would’ve never thought to ask about that.

My boyfriend’s severely allergic to peanuts and that causes enough issues in day to day shopping! I think an all meat diet would be even harder to come by than an all veggie diet.

I wonder if she still can eat certain bits of veggies for vitamins? cats are strict carnivores, and I feed my cat a very healthy diet of special foods with taurine and no artificial flavors, or animal digest or fats or any of that “filler” most companies put into the food, and even then, a lot of the specially formulated stuff has veggies mixed in in trace amounts for vitamins, but they’re all specific ones cats can break down. Different food digests at different rates, too, so maybe the stuff she’s most likely to find is just the least healthy for her? (like how she likes and can eat real cheese…)

A strict carnivorous diet would become really expensive soon!

Now I’m wondering if anything innocuous to us would actually be poisonous to her! Such as chocolate or grapes to cats and dogs…

Like ordering for a dog…
“No, I just want a piece of grilled chicken. No bun. Yes, I know that doesn’t count as a chicken sandwich… Look, there’s a hungry beagle in the seat next to me and she won’t shut up about it!” “Woofwoof Woof!”

So, this is a comment that is like 2 years or so late, but when I worked at McDonald’s we had something like this come up. One of the people in the drive-thru ordered a kid’s meal, but asked that the hamburger had no bun. Our cook started being very whiny about it, until I found out (and passed on) that the reason was his daughter was allergic to sesame seeds, which all our buns had at the time.

In fact, it should be very obvious how very similar the human and carnivore digestive systems are. Here’s counting the ways…

•Dogs and humans have canine teeth.
•Dogs and humans eat a meal, and then may not eat again for a few hours, or days. (Herbivores graze all day long, nearly every waking moment looking for forage.)
•They use an up and down chewing motion of the jaws
•Length, digestive enzymes and function of the stomach are nearly identical in human and carnivore digestive systems. No digestion occurs in the rabbit’s stomach; in a cow, digestion does not occur until stomach number 4.

There is much more comparing carnivore to herbivore and our own digestive system

Not being able to eat the bun must suck…
I mean it really makes eating meat easier… or at least makes eating it cleanly easier. And besides, its only real purpose is just to go straight through the digestive system and out the other side… right?